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Happy Thanksgiving

I am very grateful today for all of the blessings I have. As I think about each of the privileges which I enjoy, my mind keeps coming back to the meaning of this holiday–why it was instituted and by whom.

It is a national holiday, one which finds its roots in the hopes and desires of men and women willing to sacrifice all, even what very, very little they had, in order to come to a free land so that they might live out their dreams. They dreamed to be free from oppressive government, to be free to worship according to the dictates of their own conscience, and to own property so that they might have the freedom to live in peace.

This is how the great United States of America started. Explorers came. Then the oppressed followed. I believe with all my heart that they were brought here by the hand of an Almighty God who loved them. That truth was brought home to me as I watched a special on the history channel yesterday about the Mayflower. They were preserved and protected.

As I contemplate who these people were and what they did, I realize that they were not perfect. Some of them did not treat the native peoples as they should have. But many did. Many tried to live in peace with the American Indians. In the 1800’s, the Mormons did. And they were not the only ones who tried.

I know that this land is preserved by the hand of God for His own purposes. I know that if we serve Him according to the commandments which he has given us, it will always remain a land of liberty to those who are here. It will never be brought into captivity.

But this I also know: It is our duty to remain faithful to God and his commandments. Contrary to what Barack Obama might say, this nation IS a Judeo-Christian nation. It was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. The founding fathers were believing men. They leaned on the power of God to preserve them.

I was thoroughly impressed by President Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation read by Glenn Beck yesterday. The full text can be found here:

I wonder, when was the last time as a nation that we prayed to God, in “humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience” as Lincoln said? This nation has gone far astray from the pure fount from which our roots drew strength and nourishment when it was young.

It is my prayer, a prayer of thanksgiving and gratitude for the great privileges which I personally enjoy, that this nation will be preserved because of the efforts, even the very lives, lived by the righteous among us. Let us not be like Sodom which would have been spared had there been but ten righteous found. Let our voices be heard among the people. Let our voices reach the heavens in supplication for mercy. And may we always be thankful–grateful for the men and women who gave all so that this nation would be born during days of revolution, unified during days of civil war, and protected during days of world wars.